


They Don't Let Go

by scribefindegil



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Cuddlefic, Gen, Hugs, Post-Canon, Space family, all the hugs, it was supposed to be fluff but then everyone cried so???, magically assisted hand-holding, now one big family, secret moon base family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 23:30:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11611209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: It's later. The world didn't end.Lucretia doesn't know how to keep moving forwards. Neither does anyone else, but at least they're starting with a cuddle pile.





	They Don't Let Go

**Author's Note:**

> Cuddlefic prompt from bpdtaak0 on tumblr: starblaster crew together again post world-saving.
> 
> Written after ep 67 under the assumption that they save the world and everyone is Okay.

It’s later. The world didn’t end.

Lucretia picks her way across what was once the central quad of the Bureau of Balance, and is now just . . . remnants. Cracked cobblestones. Scorched grass.

She doesn’t need to run away or build this rubble up into another shield. Doesn’t need to agonize over the fate of the world. For the first time in one hundred and eleven years, she’s free.

And she has no idea what to do. She reaches out her hand for a staff that isn’t there and almost stumbles. She scans the sky and knows, for the first time in so long, that there’s nothing coming, and she feels empty.

Her feet take her towards her office. What’s left of it. Most of the central dome is still standing. Not all the other buildings were so lucky.

And then she hears the song.

The duet.

It floats through the ruins of the moon base, slow and resonant like whale song through the oceans, and Lucretia brings a hand up to her mouth. The deepest of the voices seems to catch at something in her sternum, her whole body vibrating in time with the notes. The higher voice dances overhead playfully, a descant running up and down and around the melody.

They sound happy.

She feels selfish even for listening to it, but she heads towards the sound. A twinge of pain shoots through her right arm as she walks. Just a sprained wrist. A small price to pay for surviving yet another apocalypse.

She can find a healer if she goes planetside. Maybe that’s better. She’s not sure she can face the rest of the crew—her family—now that they know what she did to them. Now that they know how everything went wrong. She’s already spent a decade alone—what’s a few more years?

With a goal in mind her steps are steadier as she heads towards the hanger. The glass orbs have probably all been shattered, but she’s been surprised before. If not, she has enough magic left in her for Feather Fall.

She’s crossing an empty space between two domes when she sees them and freezes in her tracks. Nearly everyone is there. They must have been called by the song of the Voidfish, like she was. For a moment she fears that they’re hurt, and then she sees Carey shift and throw an arm tighter around Killian, and she realizes they’re only on the floor because they’ve chosen to be.

Magnus is the epicenter just like he always is, almost hidden behind everyone else despite his bulk. He and Killian sit shoulder to shoulder, leaning companionably against each other with Carey curled into the triangle between their bodies. The dragonborn clutches at her girlfriend’s arm, wrapping it tight in her own as if she’s trying to turn herself into a shield, and her forehead rests on Killian’s bicep. The bandages are gone—the wound healed up without even a scar for Carey’s fingers to trace.

Their third teammate sits behind them, huge and solid, with her one humanoid arm draped across Killian’s other shoulder and her conduit casting a steadfast blue glow into the dimness of the lunar twilight. A stray spark shoots from the exposed circuits on her gun arm—sliced open by another soldier of the Hunger before she blasted it back out of existence.

Angus is asleep on Magnus’s lap, snoring gently. His skinned knees almost make him look like an ordinary child who’d taken a tumble during play, but his tattered clothes and the snapped feather that dangles pathetically from his cap remind her of everything he’s been through. Nothing a child should ever have to experience.

Nothing a child will have to experience again. They won. Part of her still doesn’t believe it, and part of her—the part that was forged during her first year of loneliness, the part as strong and unyielding as steel—clings to their victory as proof that she had been right, that everything she’d done had been justified if it led to this. The Hunger had been defeated. The world was still there. She clings to the thought as tightly as Carey clung to Killian’s arm, anchoring herself as best she could in the maelstrom of guilt that swirled through her chest.

She watches Magnus, whose happy ending had crumbled with the rocks of the Craftsman’s Corridor, squish close to Killian on one side and then to Taako on the other. She watches Merle, who had run from his family and grown embittered by his faith, stretch out his tree arm and snuggle deeper into the nest he’s made between the other two Reclaimers. She watches Davenport, restored to his eloquent, brilliant self, sitting slightly away from everyone else with his back to her. She watches Taako . . .

She’d barely been able to bring herself to look at the lefthand side of the group where Lup’s spectral lich form floats between Taako and Barry, her robe rippling with unseen astral breezes. They’d find some way to restore her to her mortal form eventually. Lucretia is sure of that. But for now she’s insubstantial. Ephemeral. Untouchable. Taako’s hand twitches next to his sister’s, his fingers reaching for something he can’t feel.

Then his hand moves in a familiar pattern and he mutters something, and Lucretia gasps as a glowing blue shape appears next to him, a hand of shimmering spectral force encasing his own. The Mage Hand reaches for Lup, flipping up the hood of her robe before closing around her skeletal fingers. Like her, it’s made of magic. She laughs when it connects, and she squeezes back.

Lucretia watches until the Mage Hand blinks out. Taako re-casts it. Lup keeps holding her brother’s hand.

The certainly that Lucretia had held onto for the past decade dissolves away. There’s no way they’ll ever forgive her. She wouldn’t expect them to.

Behind and above the group Fisher floats in the air, dancing and singing, and the singing is more joyful than anything she’s heard in years. The baby Voidfish loops around its parent, weaving through its tendrils and singing its own melody. Somehow, Magnus has already given it a duck.

She’d only meant to look for a moment, long enough to fix the scene in her memory. It wasn’t something she’d ever dare to paint, but perhaps a sketch to carry with her. Perhaps a reminder that her family would be all right without her.

But she lingers too long, and only realizes it when one of the baby Voidfish’s playful orbits takes it over Magnus’s head, ruffling his hair. He looks up, laughing, and his eyes meet Lucretia’s. She sees the shock in them. The recognition that she’d missed so much and that hurts so much now that she has it. She turns to flee.

“Lucretia!” he calls. “Wait!”

She does. Squeezes her eyes shut to steel herself, and then turns back.

They’re all watching her, but Magnus is the only one who’s moved. He’s halfway upright, gently handing Angus off to Killian, and then he’s walking towards her. Lucretia just stands there and waits—for the tirade, for the blow, for whatever she has coming. But when he speaks, it’s the last words she ever thought she would hear.

“Thank you.”

And he hugs her, his big arms closing around her back and knocking the breath out of her lungs. Everyone else looks as surprised as she is. Taako’s face twists into a sneer. Angus rubs his eyes and blinks at them, bewildered.

Slowly, she lets her arms fall until they’re resting tentatively on the soft fabric of Magnus’s shirt. He hasn’t let go, but he raises his head from her shoulder so that she can see his face.

“Thank you,” he says again. “For Raven’s Roost.”

It’s like a knife in her heart and she stiffens and shakes her head. “No. No, don’t . . . I’m sorry, I couldn’t . . .”

When Magnus speaks again, his voice is shaking. “Don’t get me wrong. What you did was . . . stupid, and wrong, and . . . I know we’re probably going to spend a lot of time talking about how it was stupid and wrong. But . . . with Raven’s Roost, with Julia . . . I was happy. I was so damn happy and I would never have had that without you, so . . . thank you.”

He’s crying properly by the time he finishes, big sloppy tears that run down his face and plop onto Lucretia’s robe. He doesn’t even try to wipe them away.

Lucretia doesn’t know how to respond. There’s nothing she can say that will convey all the grief and the regret and the sorrow and the gratitude that are bubbling through her, so she doesn’t try. She just leans forward and throws her arms around her friend, clutching at his shoulders and feeling the warmth of his body, his heartbeat, the moisture of his tears on her neck.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, over and over until he stops crying. “I’m sorry. I love you. I never wanted . . .”

“I know,” he chokes out.

Lucretia feels a drop run down the side of her nose and realizes that she’s crying too.

Eventually, Magnus draws back. He doesn’t wipe his eyes, just shakes his head like a dog and lets out a shaky little laugh.

“I don’t . . . know how to feel,” he says. “In general. There’s so much to talk about. There’s so much to figure out. But do you think . . .” He pauses, looking over his shoulder at Taako. “Do you think we can do that later?”

Taako looks from Magnus to Lup and finally up at Lucretia. “I’m not forgiving you,” he says.

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“I . . . don’t know yet,” says Barry. “But I think we’ve probably had enough fighting for today.”

Slowly, everyone nods.

“All right,” says Lucretia. “I . . . won’t leave. When you’re ready to talk . . .”

Magnus takes her hand and pulls her back towards the group. “No,” he says. “Stay.”

“But . . . why?”

“We’re your family, idiot,” says Lup, and Merle and Angus nod. Magnus sits, and Carey and Killian and Angus cuddle back up to him, but he doesn’t let go of Lucretia’s hand.

With everything she wants to say thrumming in her throat, with tears on her cheeks and an ache in her chest, Lucretia kneels, and then as a sob rises through her she curls up like the frightened girl she’d been when the Starblaster first began its voyage and slumps against Magnus’s chest. He holds her. And he doesn’t let go. Angus lays a tentative hand on her upper arm, and Carey and Killian are holding the boy on their laps with their hands clasped around his waist, and Noelle is holding onto the two of them. And they don’t let go. Merle moves closer, holding Davenport’s hand with his tree arm, and claps his flesh-and-blood hand onto Magnus’s shoulder. And they don’t let go.

A glow of magic flares as Barry casts Mage Hand and reaches up to caress Lup’s cheek. She takes the spectral hand gently, and on her other side Taako’s fingers, enveloped in blue light, are entwined with hers. And they don’t let go. Fisher and its baby float towards the group, still singing. The grown-up Voidfish wraps two of its tendrils around its baby and one around the duck it’s carrying and one around Magnus, who hums softly back to it. And they don’t let go.

None of them let go.

Our capacity for love increases with each person we cross paths with throughout our lives and with each moment we spend with those people. Across a hundred worlds and a hundred years the Starblaster crew crossed paths with countless individuals. And on every world, despite themselves, they always found something and somebody to love, even knowing as they did that they would have to turn and flee when the Hunger arrived and drained the color from the sky.

But all capacities have their limits. As much love as they saw, they also saw pain and sorrow and heartbreak beyond what anyone should have to bear. Finally, it was their very love for each other and the universe around them that tore them apart and set them adrift. Lucretia’s love for this Plane that made her vow to save it, and her love for her friends that led her to make the foolish, terrible choice to heap their combined suffering onto her own shoulders.

Our capacity for forgiveness does not grow linearly. Lucretia knows this. She has known this since before she made her choice, but she made it anyway. At the very point that her friends remembered how much they loved her, she expected to lose them.

And perhaps she still would, at least some of them. She would accept it. But for the moment she feels her friends around her, feels hope that they can be free now, that the time they have left won’t be overshadowed by tragedy the way their past was. She feels love burning in her chest as sharp and bright as the Light of Creation.

She spreads her arms as far as she can, embracing everyone she can reach.

And she doesn’t let go.


End file.
